Personal Financial Management Archives - Page 4 of 13

Personal Financial Management for Couples

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 29, 2012
Categories: Mobile Banking, Personal Financial Management

Although, I’ve been married since Ghostbusters was in the theatres, I still (sort of) remember what it was like to have just one person’s finances to manage. If I recall correctly, it went something like this:

Money in. Money out. Then hopefully, a dollar or two leftover.

But then you get married, and even if you have separate accounts (we don’t), there is quite a bit more to it:

Money in. Discuss. Money out. Discuss. Oops, too much money out. ~~Point fingers~~. Discuss a lot. Compromise. Try to do better next month.

And then you have kids and it gets even more complicated.

So why are PFMs all about the data and do little to help you collaborate about your money? Because they were mostly designed by single, urban, 20-somethings (I know that’s not entirely true, but you get the point).

What we need is the “Facebook of PFMs” where you can share appropriate financial details with your spouse, family, parents and other financial stakeholders in your life (CPA, bank, advisor, etc). The same concept extends to businesses who have even more stakeholders to communicate with.

While I haven’t seen anything that does this in the PFM space yet. There are some interesting web apps being developed that help couples sync their lives together. The first one I heard about was Pair, which has gotten quite a bit of press.

But there’s a new entry, Toronto-based SimplyUs is more of an organizational tool that a photo sharing app (note 1). Right now it focuses on calendar and todo list sharing (screenshots inset & below). That’s a great start, but an obvious next step is financial collaboration.

Bottom line: There is a large unmet need for collaboration tools linked to transaction accounts (for more info, see note 2). The opportunity is both for families and also micro and small businesses who will pay monthly fees for the service.

No tool can make financial management as simple as it was for our 23-year-old single self. But by harnessing the power of the synced mobile banking app, it should be much more manageable.

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SimplyUs iPhone app (25 May 2012)

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Notes:
1. For more info on SimplyUs, see last week’s TechCrunch post.
2. For more info on the importance of banking the kids, see our Online Banking Report on Family Banking (July 2011). For more on financial collaboration, see Bank Transaction Alerts & Streaming (July 2010). And finally, our last PFM report is here (May 2010; subscription required for all).

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Change Sciences Names PNC Virtual Wallet Best Bank PFM with Mint.com a Close Second

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 27, 2012
Categories: Mint, Personal Financial Management, PNC Bank

Researcher Change Sciences has been doing outstanding work in financial user experience for more than a decade. In the last year alone, they’ve published deep dives in online, mobile, social media, mortgage, small business, investing, and account opening. The company counts most of the major players as customers; typical reports cost $5,000.

Its latest, published this week, contains a much-needed look at the UI of personal financial manager (PFM) services offered through major banks.

The winner? PNC Bank, which not only took top honors for its Virtual Wallet, but also claimed the number-three spot for Wealth Insight, a service geared to high-net-worth clients, launched last September. Both PNC PFMs were designed in conjunction with IDEO.

Mint.com came in a close second followed by the biggest surprise of the survey Bank Simple, which tied with USAA as the second-highest scoring bank.

For more info, download the research fact sheet.

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Overall PFM Ranking
points on Change Sciences scorecard

Source: Change Sciences, March 2012

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Notes:
1. Image from Italian band PFM <pfmpfm.it>
2. For our take on PFMs, see our May 2010 Online Banking Report.

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Pageonce Adds Billpay; Showcases Multiple Mobile Apps on Single Page

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 24, 2011
Categories: Bill payment, Mobile Banking, Mobile Payments, Personal Financial Management

Last week, we looked at how Square makes a single webpage look great across various mobile platforms. Today, we look at the exact opposite problem. How to showcase your various mobile apps on a single webpage.

Pageonce does it as well as we’ve seen, using a single showcase panel that includes all five of its mobile app platforms across the top: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows. Users can scroll horizontally to see two sets of screenshots for each platform.

The company also includes version number, date of the last update, and app size in the lower right corner. And of course, there’s a link to download the appropriate marketplace to download the app. The Android page uses a QR code instead of a link.

In other news, Pageonce added bill payment to its iPhone and Android app today, moving ahead of Mint in the features arm race. The new Gold service, which we haven’t tested yet, is priced at $4.99/mo, good news for fee-starved online financial providers. Mint says it has bill payment coming too. It will be interesting to see if they put a fee on it.

Relevance for Netbankers: The addition of transactional services such as bill payment makes third-party PFMs, or virtual banks such as BankSimple, bigger threats to mainstream banks and credit unions. As uber-consultant Richard Crone always says, "He who enrolls, controls."

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Pageonce iPhone app

iPad

Android

BlackBerry

Windows

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Note: We cover mobile banking and payments periodically in our Online Banking Report (subscription).

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ING Direct Read-Only Access Code for Third-Party PFMs

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 20, 2011
Categories: ING Direct, Personal Financial Management, Security, Security & Privacy

To my knowledge, ING Direct is the only major U.S. bank blocking third-party PFM access. But users can direct their PFM around the gate with a special "read-only" access code.

How it works
It’s not particularly easy to find, buried three levels deep in MyAccounts | Preferences | Access Code.

The default setting is Blocked, as you can see in the first screenshot below.

But once you find the page, it couldn’t be simpler to set up. Simply press the blue Create Access Code button in the upper right, and in a split second, you have created a read-only access code and opened your account to PFM access.

To change back, you merely click the "Block" button in upper right.

The only thing missing is an explanation of what to do with the Access Code. Is it the username or password? While that’s explained in an link from the first page, it’s not on the second page where you need it. (BTW, it’s the password).

The bank also confirmed the new code via email right away (third screenshot).

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Access code main page (20 Oct 2011)

New access code

Email confirmation

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Note: OBR subscribers can access our previous reports on security at OnlineBankingReport.com (published in 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008).

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Launching: Cake Health is a New PFM for Healthcare

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 12, 2011
Categories: Launches, Personal Financial Management

Healthcare expense management continues to be a pain-point for most consumers. Today, Cake Health launched a “Mint for healthcare” which uses similar technology to automatically download healthcare transactions and use the data to manage insurance reimbursements and other aspects of healthcare.

The company also launched a mobile app that syncs with the desktop version and uses the camera to upload documentation to the system (screenshot below). The startup impressed the expert panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, where it launched today.

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Mint.com Helps Users Keep Track of What’s Ahead with New Bill Timeline & Reminders

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 25, 2011
Categories: Alerts & Messaging, Mint, Personal Financial Management

It’s hard to believe that Mint turns four next month. It made its financial industry debut at our first Finovate conference (demo here, Oct. 2, 2007) after having launched to the general public a few weeks earlier.

With 5 million registered users, and public ownership (Intuit), it’s now “the establishment” that dozens of startups look to unseat.

Mint made a large stride forward this week with the addition of a bill-due-date timeline to its Overview page, the page that users land on after login (see inset and first screenshot below).

The company also expanded its text and email bill-due-date reminder system. A wizard launched from a promotion on Mint’s main page (screenshot 2, 3) prompts users to establish reminders for regular household bills.

Bottom line: Mint’s billing timeline is a good example of the forward-looking approach that’s much needed in online and mobile banking.

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A timeline of upcoming bills has been added to the Mint.com’s main Overview page (25 Aug. 2011)

Mint promotes the new feature with a huge interactive banner on the main Overview page

In this pop-up box, Mint gathers together likely bills and asks if you want a reminder

A timeline of upcoming bills has been added to the main overview page

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Note: For more on online personal financial management (OFM), see Online Banking Report (published May 2010).

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What Online Banking and the Weather Have in Common

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 23, 2011
Categories: Personal Financial Management

I’ve always been a bit obsessive about the weather. I blame it on my Iowa roots, where the economy ebbs and flows depending on the rain and sunshine, and where you have just about every type of weather condition, sometimes in the same day.

One of the main reasons I wanted an iPhone back in 2007 (in the days before the App Store and mobile banking), was to get a weather button in my pocket 24/7. But it wasn’t until today I realized that weather info is a decent metaphor for where remote banking is headed.

Think about the weather displayed on your mobile or PC. You get some pretty good info about what’s going to happen today, plus decent estimates on the next few days, followed by a SWAG on what might happen a week or two out. This is helpful for planning your clothes, weekend activities, and as a last resort, for making conversation (sorry family).

This is exactly what’s needed in online banking, a FORECAST of your finances. You need to know exactly where you stand today, plus you need an accurate prediction of your cash flows for the rest of the week based on pre-scheduled payments, followed by reasonable estimates of how things stand for the next month based on historical income and expenses.

Most of the major PFMs are incorporating forward-looking views into their interfaces. It’s probably THE most important missing element in today’s online banking. A financial forecast should be shown right next to the current balance on the main account page.

Bottom line: It’s not a perfect analogy. It’s still important to track historical spending to look for waste, fraud, and opportunities to save (note 1). But consumers need help understanding their financial position going forward. So crunch the numbers for them and let your customers get back to their mobile entertainment, even if it’s checking the weather in Yakutsk (notes 2, 3).

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Notes:
1. And you can help with that too; see BillGuard post.
2. Yakutsk, Russia, is the coldest city you can track on the iPhone (hat tip to my nephew Marcus).
3. And yes, that’s an actual image stored on my iPhone. I don’t make these things up.
4. For more on online personal financial management (OFM), see Online Banking Report (published May 2010).

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Truliant Federal Credit Union Gives Away iPads to Promote FinanceWorks PFM

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 11, 2011
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Personal Financial Management

There are three huge usability challenges with online personal financial management (PFM):

It’s hard to get started
It’s a pain to keep up with tagging transactions to make the data meaningful
It can be disconcerting for many users to view spending summaries

That’s why so few Americans engage in PFM, despite its obvious benefits (note 1). One way to tackle the first problem: Offer a sweepstakes or bonus to induce trial.

Truliant FCU is doing that with a late-summer sweeps encouraging members to log in and give its FinanceWorks (powered by Intuit’s Quicken) program a try. Members who sign up for the PFM between July 6 and Sept. 29 are automatically entered into the sweeps. There is no cost for the service (note 2).

Prizes include:

$100 awarded each week
iPad 2 awarded each month

Total value of the prizes is about $3,000.

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Truliant FCU PFM sweeps (11 Aug. 2011)

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Notes:
1. For more on online personal financial management (OFM), see Online Banking Report (published May 2010).
2. We urge FIs to consider charging for value-added services such as online PFM. See our recent Online Banking Report, Creating Fee-Based Online & Mobile Banking Services (published May 2011) for the rationale.

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Launching: BillGuard’s “Anti-virus for Credit Cards”

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 26, 2011
Categories: Credit/Debit Cards, Launches, Personal Financial Management

Fintech made a good showing at TechCrunch’s semi-annual Disrupt conference in NYC. Of 32 startups that launched on stage, three were financial-related:

Spenz: A mobile PFM (Disrupt demo)
InvoiceASAP: A mobile invoicing app with accounting integration (Disrupt demo)
BillGuard: A transaction-monitoring service (Disrupt demo)

And both InvoiceASAP and BillGuard (discussed below) were selected to come back on the third day and compete, along with four other startups, for the top prize in front of an all-star panel of judges. The judges selected BillGuard runner-up behind GetAround, a clever peer-to-peer car rental service which wowed the crowd, also taking home the People’s Choice award. _____________________________________________________________________________

BillGuard overview
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The TechCrunch judges and analysts went gaga over BillGuard. Everyone wanted to use the service, and most wanted to invest in the company.

However, the company recently landed a $3 million Series A round (February 2011), so they’ll have to wait. Investors include: Bessemer Venture Partners, Chris Dixon, Ron Conway, IA Ventures, Howard Lindzon and Yaron Galai. The Israeli company has 12 employees. The founders are Yaron Samid, CEO, and Raphael Ouzan, CTO.

Currently, BillGuard is free for the first card and can be upgraded to monitor an unlimited number of cards for $4/mo, a classic freemium model.

In the two days following the company’s Monday launch, users added 10,000 cards to the alerting service. In the initial scans, looking back through 30 days of transactions, the company identified potential nuisance charges on 20% of the cards analyzed. The flagged transactions ranged in value from $2 to $6,000 with the latter described as “fraud on a very wealthy person’s card.” ______________________________________________________________________________

How it works
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1. Register at the site with just your email address and ZIP code

2. Enter your username and password for a credit card account into the Yodlee-powered aggregation engine

3. The past 30 days of transactions are immediately downloaded and analyzed for potentially fraudulent or unwanted charges (see screenshot 2)

4. Charges are color-coded by risk assessment (green = good, orange = review, red = flagged) (see screenshot 3). Much like anti-virus companies, BillGuard relies on its user base (crowdsourcing) to identify nuisance and fraudulent charges.

5. You can quickly call up the “reviewable” transactions and choose to mark them “good” or wait for more information on the merchant from BillGuard and its user base (screenshot _______________________________________________________________________________

Analysis
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In my case, the service did not find any bad transactions in the 85 it reviewed from my primary business and personal credit cards. All seven marked “unsure” were fine. None were flagged red.

But according to the company, the average American loses $300 per year in unwanted charges, and I’m way over that. Just last year, I lost more than $1,000 because I had the wrong plan on my mobile phone. But that was a legitimate charge from an existing merchant of mine. BillGuard doesn’t guard against stupidity, yet, but it wouldn’t take a whole lot more intelligence to start flagging this type of out-of-bounds charge as well.

The potential for financial safeguard services is huge. Just look at the multi-billion credit-monitoring industry, or Mint.com for that matter which alerts users to bank fees and keeps a running total. The question isn’t whether consumers want this type of protection, certainly they do. The issue is whether anyone will take the time to set up the service, pay for it, and then take the time to monitor their accounts.

BillGuard knows that and is actively pursuing deals with large banks to package the service into online banking. In its Monday demo, the company said it was in talks with three top-ten banks (on Wednesday they said, “Make that 4”).

Distributing BillGuard would be a mixed blessing for banks. Earlier detection of fraud would be useful, but the labor involved in working through increased dispute resolution, especially false positives, would have to be factored in. But again, BillGuard understands the dilemma and is developing dispute-resolution capabilities that will SAVE issuers time and money.

I predict we’ll be seeing a lot more from this company so keep them on your radar. I know we will.

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1. Welcome screen after first download & scan (26 May 2011)

2. Initial scan results with 7 transactions marked “review”

3. Transactions are color-coded by risk assessment

4. The transaction review page

5. TechCrunch finalist demo (click to watch on TechCrunch site; )

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Note: For more on online personal financial management (OFM/PFM), see our Online Banking Report.

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Launching: Balance Financial Introduces Hybrid Billpay/PFM/Bookkeeper

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 3, 2011
Categories: Bill payment, Launches, Online Resources (ORCC), PayTrust, Personal Financial Management, Small Business

Internet-enabling every service and device on the planet creates fascinating new business opportunities. And we are seeing our share of them in the fintech space (note 1). Knowing how to deliver the proper blend of personal service and automation is an area of extreme importance to financial institutions: The optimal solution varies by customer, by product, and even by time of day.

One relatively neglected area involves premium services that offer state-of-the-art tech married to specialized human service, for a fee. Large banks have private banking departments that handle the bills and day-to-day finances of households with millions in assets. But those that fall outside the private banking threshold are generally offered free, self-service tools available to everyone.

Back when only 10% to 20% of households were online, that distinction was necessary. But now that 60% to 70% or even more of a bank’s households use the Internet, there are enough customers to slice and dice financial management services into a variety of offerings and price points. There’s a lot of revenue available for service offerings in the wide range between free and private banking.

Enter the newest player in high-end bill payment: Balance Financial, an angel-funded company based in Seattle that launched its new service this week. CEO Devin Miller was also involved in the launch of one of our favorites new services of 2010, Finsphere’s PinPoint mobile location-aware fraud-alert service (previous post).

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How it works
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Balance is a unique mixture of automatic bill pay and human bookkeeper, with an online PFM thrown in to help keep track of it all. The company has built a rich PFM, added billpay powered by Online Resources, and given each customer their very own actual person who oversees the account.

Unlike previous generations of billpay and the scan-and-pay offerings from PayTrust and others, Balance Financial does everything for you. It receives the printed or electronic billing statement, it uploads the docs to its website, and then the most important piece, it pays the bills automatically based on your prior instructions, just like the private banking officer. The end user is only contacted if the bill falls outside the preexisting parameters.

Sound too good to be true? Maybe, if it were free, but it’s far from it. The company tested a variety of pricing options and settled on a price that’s borderline ridiculous for the retail banking mindset: $75 per month.

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Analysis
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Are they crazy? Maybe, but probably not. The company has been delivering personal bookkeeping services for seven years, and has paid more than 100,000 bills for its clients (note 3). It knows from experience there are affluent households and small businesses that are happy to offload this task for much more than $75 per month. When paying larger bills, the late fees alone can easily be in this range (note 2).

Balance admits the audience for $75/mo is tiny. But as its technology gets better, and its bookkeepers can take on bigger client loads, it believes it can push this price down, maybe even way down. So if you are interested in finding a new way to serve your mass affluents with something they can’t get anywhere else, take a look at Balance.

Balance Financial integrates the human side throughout the Web-based app (3 March 2011)

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Notes:

1. From the look of the applications for the upcoming FinovateSpring, the number of startups is growing at an even faster pace.
2. Our record penalty for paying a bill late at our business is $1,100. We’d just made a huge charge and by being that one day late, our APR was bounced to 25%, and we went into revolving mode over two cycles. Even though we paid the balance off within 7 days of making the charge, it still cost $700 one month and $400 the next. Anyway, that one incident alone would pay for Balance for 1.25 years, not to mention avoiding the huge frustration of making a thousand-dollar blunder.
3. The original bookkeeping service was founded in 2004, by Devin’s wife, Rebecca Miller.
4. For more on online personal financial management (OFM/PFM), see our Online Banking Report.

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Launching: Hearst’s Manilla Wants to be Your Online Hub for Bills, Statements, Rewards and Subscriptions

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 28, 2011
Categories: Bill payment, Electronic Bill Payment & Presentment, Electronic Statements, Launches, Personal Financial Management

Manilla, a new account aggregation service from Hearst Corporation, launched today at Demo. Here’s the official announcement and its demo video is embedded below.

Manilla currently aggregates accounts in four categories (more are on the way):

Household for keeping track of bills
Finance for keeping track of bank accounts and credit cards
Subscriptions for keeping track of magazine subscriptions
Travel for tracking mileage programs

In the first screenshot below, I’ve added an account in the finance category (American Express, which is shown as pending) and one in the travel section (American Airlines, which displayed the account balance immediately). I have yet to add a household bill or a magazine subscription.

In the second screenshot, you can see what it will look like after the account has been populated with many accounts (this is an example directly from the Manilla website).

The service will not show third-party advertising. Like Doxo, it will display marketing messages only from participating billers. And also like Doxo, billers will pay the freight, sending the company a small fee for each electronic bill it sends through Manilla (more on its business model here).

Analysis
As I’ve mentioned in several posts about Doxo, there is a huge need for a secure, easy-to-use hub to help households organize their bills and statements. While Doxo is currently focused on delivering bills only from participating billers, Manilla allows users to aggregate bills and statements from virtually anyone supported by its Yodlee-powered aggregation engine.

So, if you are willing to sit down and enter usernames and passwords, the service can begin delivering value immediately. Consumers have been reluctant to do that unless they trust the company. But with Hearst Corp. backing it and with the credibility of two major billing partners, Comcast and Citibank, Manilla may be able to get over the trust hurdle.

1. Initial Manilla homepage prompts new users to add accounts in four categories (28 Feb. 2011)

2. Manilla homepage after the user has set up accounts
Note: The icons are for bills, statements, notices and offers

3. Reminders area

Demo video (link)

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Note:
For more info, see our recent reports: Paperless Billing and Banking and Email Banking: Revitalizing the Channel.

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American Express Now Offers Basic PFM Functions

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 10, 2011
Categories: American Express, Credit/Debit Cards, Personal Financial Management

I was pleasantly surprised today to find that American Express has slipped basic PFM (personal financial management) functionality into its online card management area (note 1). The company allows the user to tag transactions and view results in graphical format (see screenshots below).

According to the FAQ, each transaction can have up to five tags. And each user can create up to 200 unique tags to apply to transactions.

Significance: Combined with the categories automatically assigned to each transaction, American Express is now offering basic PFM services. Although a little clunky—a three-click process is required to add a tag—it’s a nice addition and something every online banking service should support.

How it works
1. Click the “Add Tags to Transactions” link on the right side of the Statements & Activity area (below):

2. Select a transaction(s) and apply an existing tag or create a new one, then click the Apply Tag button (lower right):

How it looks
After apply the tag “Personal,” it now shows up in the transaction listing:

Once tagged, users can view transactions by tag categories:

Or view graphs by tag:

Note:
1. The example shown is for a Business Gold account. I’m not sure how long it’s been available. The first mention I could find about it via Google was Nov. 2010, so we’ll go with that until someone chimes in with better info.
2. For more on online personal financial management (OFM/PFM), see our Online Banking Report.

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